Free Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond by Jayne Barnard Page B

rain, but leaving a slick over the vast, flat rooftop with its contra-dance of passengers, porters, and luggage.
    At the last step, a man in majordomo’s livery of black and teal—the Aquatiempe colours, Maddie recognized—lay in wait for them. A phalanx of one-wheeled automatons stood behind him, their armatures ready to take the load from the porters. Steamer trunks would be towed while smaller boxes were piled on their polished platforms. The ladies, the majordomo indicated with a bow and an outstretched hand, would be conveyed across the terminal in a teacup-shaped, auto-steering steam-carriage, painted and upholstered in teal with black accents. Trust an Artificer family to have the best and newest automatons.
    The mist thickened to dampening droplets. An umbrella rose from the teacup’s rim and spread itself over the cushioned area. Its surface shifted hues with each raindrop, making an ever-changing mosaic of water-scapes from deep blue to palest green around a core palette of purest teal. The pole slid upward to permit easy entry to the semicircular seat, and then lowered itself to a distance safe for hat trimmings, its angles optimized for deflecting rain from passengers. As soon as the ladies were seated, the teacup turned on its saucer and rolled smoothly away, its steam-driven wheels making less sound than the clockwork mechanism that guided it.
    Hearing the tiny chuff of released steam above the ticking, Maddie knew a small thrill of family pride. Her great-grandfather had introduced the first bronze bearing that allowed a step-down in power from a steam-driven mechanism to a clockwork one, opening up the world to wondrous steam-and-clockwork constructions, including self-propelling, self-guiding vehicles like this one. For that invention a grateful Empire had created him the third-ever Steamlord, and awarded him the family heraldic alloy of bronze. To that one invention the family ever since owed its prosperity. Not so thrilling was the old man’s use of an entirely unrelated technology to tinker with the family’s genetic heritage and turn all their hair bronze with a single black streak. Dying over that gleaming metallic hue, on lashes and brows as well as scalp, was one of Maddie’s more irksome grooming tasks. But nothing the Aquatiempe had accomplished would have been possible without her great-grandfather’s bronze, step-down, power bearing.
    Across the terminus they went, the teacup gliding this way and that through the clusters of passengers and multi-cart baggage trains. Obie walked beside it, the majordomo behind, his automatons following him with the trunks and hat-boxes. Above the buzz of wheels, voices, and airship engines, Obie pointed out to the nieces the airships of various nations’ fleets, the Greek Royal Barge, and the Venetian Doge’s personal craft, which was rumoured to be used largely to ferry visiting Vatican officials to discreet gaming establishments.
    “Hah,” said Maddie. “Nothing in Venice is discreet. Some pleasures are merely more expensive than others for the quality of their illusion of discretion.” Too late she realized the discussion might be straying into waters unsuitable for sheltered English debutantes, but the girls were not attending. Instead, they looked ahead eagerly for their first glimpse of their cousin’s new family’s air yacht. The procession halted beside an elaborately painted airship of considerable size. Its Carnivale mask motif was predominantly teal and black, ornamented with silver scrollwork and fist-sized crystals polished to the sheen of diamonds. This was what Maddie’s father would consider vulgar ostentation. She stepped out of the saucer with the aid of Obie’s hand and the teacup carried on, up a black gangplank railed by silver ropes.
    Clarice called back, “Please hurry, Miss Hatter. Anyone will guide you to the ladies’ parlour.”
    “Just thanking the nice officer,” Maddie said. As the automatons flowed around them with